LEPERS IN CHINA.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCVII, Issue 11180, 30 January 1897, Page 2

LEPERS IN CHINA.

[By E. H. Parker.] (C/tnmbers’s Journal.) - The first place in China where I 'saw ■ lepers in any great number was Canton. In that city they seem to have a great monopoly of the retail rope and cord trade, and they may be seen any day at the .'corners of the narrow streets squatting on ithe ground with their humble stock-in-itrade before them; nor does there appear ■ to be any particular dread of 4 personal contact with them. Whether it is that a municipal rule keeps them away, _ or whether it is that the more repulsive lepers do not care to come into town, it is ■at any rate unusual .to see very advanced cases in the public streets of the city. In order to witness these, one must go to the ’ leper village, situated outside the east ■'gate, in the direction of the execution ground, or rather of the ghastly field into which the dead bodies of executed criminals are thrown, a mile or two below the city walls. There they, may be seen in all of decay, from a faint livid spot in the lobe of the ear to a sort of scrofulous ‘ chalky rottenness covering the greater part of the body, and slowly eating the hands and feet away. In all parts of China WHERE LEPROSY IS COMMON, the people say the same thing, namely, that there is no danger of contagion so long as a healthy person does not actually sleep with a leper. Hence it comes about that, however careless the Chinese may be in. their daily intercourse with this unfor-, innate class, they are always exceedingly particular to turn them out of town before sunset. Tending cows seems to be the occupation of the village lepers; and I remember that at one time this discovery created quite a panic amongst the European ladies of Canton. Perhaps for this reason most Europeans there now milk them own cowsi The leper village outside of Canton is a walled enclosure, containing several streets, and a considerable number of well-built bouses, with a temple and pnblic buildings for the use of the inmates. ! These are of all classes; for, no matter how rich a man may be, he is unable * to keep a leprons member of his family in Ms own house if once the fact becomes known to his ‘neighbours. Once • IN THE LEPER VILLAGE there is nothing to prevent one diseased person from marrying with another and begetting children; nor, if a healthy wife chooses to sacrifice herself to a leprons husband, does the law stand in her way. Leprosy, however, is one of the few cases which justify the breaking off of' a marriage even if it be the woman who seeks to cancel er contract with a leprous man. It not only the mere bodily contact whilst in occupation of the same sleeping accommodation which transmits the diseaseit appears sufficient if the breath of a leper, or the effluvium thrownoff by a s leper when in a comatose state, is breathed ‘at dose quarters by a , healthy person whose body is also in a comatose or reqeptive condition; thus one sister may get the disease from another, though of course conditions of receptivity are more varied and numerous in the case of man and wife. Naturally the children of lepers axe also lepers: but occasionally a generation is skipped, and a healthy son may transmit his father’s leprosy to his own progeny. However, the Chinese are so little observant in scientific medicine and surgery that we cannot be quite sure .upon this point. The only recognised way of finding out .whether a subject is affected by leprosy or not is to expose the suspected features and members to the light over a crucible of nitre (Wing siao lu), when the traces are shadowed out unmistakably. A native Shanghai newspaper of May last contains the following item -. “ Purchasers of female

slaves in the region of Canton always subject the proposed purchase to ;THE ORDEAL OP THE CRUCIBLE. •But it so happened that last year a.friond of ours bought a'girl of twelve'or thir teen, who, despite the fact fliah she had been exposed to the . nitre stove, very shortly, betrayed'k sort’of cloudy red spot.on her face.'/ A leper doctor, s at: once identified it as leprosy; But"when’lie had hex' exposed a second time, to everyone’s surprise she seemed as sound as an ordinary person. No statements of an incriminating nature 'could be .extracted from her, and she roundly swore she was no leper. .Recourse was. then had to threats, and in order to avoid being pitched into the river, she confessed at last that she really was a leper, and that the seller had told her that'if she kept a silver coin in her mouth during the crucible ordeal, no traces would come out; he warned her to keep the secret, or else she would certainly be put in the leper village ” (called in Chinese the Peug-yQau). When I was in Canton twenty years ago, there were one or two alleged European or American cases, but it did not appear to me that they were clearly authenticated; and in any event the foreign population of Canton is so fleeting and changeable that the (hospital could not possibly have time to form an adequate opinion upon a permanently resident • case. There is an expression, “selling leprosy,” well known at Canton, and possibly some sailor or temporary visitor may have fallen a victim in this way.

In Hoihow, a town in the island of Hainan to the south of Canton, I became “ quite intimate” with the lepers. There, as at Canton, they are confined, for sleeping purposes, to a’ village just outside the walls of the town, and they are authorised by old custom, or by municipal rule, to proceed twice a month to the.island metropolis of Kiungchow, in order to beg in the public streets. I used to meet them, coming back on the first and fifteenth of each month, their wallets filled with broken food. Tt is a favourite plan of theirs to force alms from a stranger by feigning to catch hold of the hand. Of course most people draw back in horror, and many are only too glad to throw a few coppers in order to exchange the lepers’ company for their room. It always seemed to me that they emitted A SORT OP “ HOT SMELL,” not a rank or loathsome or acute odour, but - a . kind of feverish, musty smell, as though some sub-metallic fume were being exuded into the air around them. Half-way between Kiungchow and Hoihow there stood a number of tiny mathuts, scarcely larger than dog-kennels, at intervals of a few yards from each other, on both sides of the road. These huts were inhabited by half-naked leper women, and most of them had lost either arms, toes, or both sets of digits. When I paid my formal visits to the mandarins in my sedan chair, I always directed the official servants who ran after me to put about five hundred cash into the palanquin, and with these cash lulled to amuse myself andgratify the women as I ran the leper gauntlet. I well remember one woman who was almost like a skeleton covered with skin. She Ixad no fingers and no upper lip; besides that, her elbows, shoulders, and facial protuberances were all covered with a sort of mouldy fluff. I don’t know whether these road cases were so bad that even the leper villages would not take them in, but there they always were during the day, and I suppose remained there at night too. In the town of Hoihow there was a curious little beggar boy, very bright and intelligent, who used to assist at the local rope-walk,, and run about Splaying with other boys in the streets, ; He was, . .. . COVERED ALL OVER BY A SORT OP HALE- ' INVISIBLE YELLOW SCALE. like a fish, and the people used to class him as a “ doubtful leper,” ' Apparently be-slept-on the doorsteps, and successfully asserted his doubtfulness to the extent of not having to go to the village at night. I never actually touched him, though I often gave him a copper, and allowed him to walk and talk with me. I believe be used tjb sleep under my porch occasionally, too; probably he is still there. In the interior provinces of Hu Peh and Kiang Si I twice came across lepers. One of them offered me some fine pears for sale. I cannot say if these inland specimens were indigenous or imported lepers. I also saw a few during my year’s stay at the riverine port of Hankow. The remarkable thing is that lepers do not suffer any pain. At first the only sign that leprosy is coming on is a feeling of numbness about the fingers, ears, or nose; the eyebrows get scabby-looking; and the hair begins to thin away. Then the face gets to assume a bright or glazed appearance here and there, as though the parts had just recently healed of a bum or scald; the eyes look hot, inflamed and ratlike, like those of a white rabbit or common ferret. Progress downward from this stage is very gradual, but any - accidental lesion encourages the formation of

DEEV AND FETID ULCERS. When I lived at Kewkiang, Dr Shearer used to take lepers in hand, and he told me his experiences. I believe careful treatment with alteratives, coupled with good feeding, may easily arrest the course of the disease, but it will not eradicate it, and the subjects are usually of too humble a walk in life to make it worth anyone’s while to feed them up unless it be for scientific purposes, or out of motives of curiosity. No perspiration ever takes place through the glazed portions, and paralysis in the face is a very usual accompaniment. So far as I have been able to ascertain, leprosy in China is confined, firstly, to places near a tidal river; and, secondly, to places of a marshy and uiidrained character. In the interior of China no such care is taken to segregate the lepers as is insisted on in Canton and Hoihow; but probably this is on account of the comparative infrequency of the disease. Against smallpox, plague, cholera and other analogous scourges the Chinese usually take no sanitary precautions whatever; it is only leprosy which imbues them with horror, although it is quite painless, and never affects the general health, except thiilv.in the case of very young people, it retards, puberty. The Hoihow people say that leprosy may he specifically acquired hy eating the flesh of a dead chicken over which a centipede has run. But there is no end to their medical yams. When I,was in Burma I saw a , few- cases

of leprosy near Rangoon ; but the weather was too hot for me to personally explore in leprous localities. A native Burmese doctor once assured me that he possessed the secret of AN ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN. CURE ** FOB LEPROSY, and offered to cure in my presence any leper I might bring to him. He said he had learned the secret from an old bonze in a kyaung, or temple such as the poor use in Burma for all the purposes of an inn. The doctor had done the priest some good turn, and the priest, who was on the verge of death, wished to requite the favour. The cure is as follows; —As in the case of the Chinese crucible test, nitre plays an important part, and it is worth while investigating the question why nitre should possess at , once the alleged property of disclosing and curing leprosy. It is also remarkable that, as with the Chinese, arsenic is used as an alterative. The Burmese bonze’s prescription specified equal parts of saltpetre arsenic, camphor, vitriol, sulphur, orpiment, common solder and white arsenic, powdered and heated over a charcoal fire. A piece of paper is laid over the pan to prevent the mixture from flaring up by contact with too. much air. The thick vapour which arises is allowed to collect in an alembic in the form of a crust. One. sixty-fourth of a rupee in_ weight of this crusty essence is administered, mixed with pure honey, to the patient, who must have previously devoured at least a pound of honey by way of preparing his stomach. Notwithstanding all this honey, the leper is at once seized with a most Violent fit of nausea and vomiting, and during the whole of the next day the leprous spots will he so hot that

THEIR GLOW MAT BE PELT AT A DISTANCE OF TWO FEET. (This remarkable glow accords with my own experience of a hot, feverish smell.) On the fourth day scabs are peeled off all the affected parts, and the process is repeated, if necessary, until all these leprous spots cease to be feverish. In some cases four or five repetitions are necessary, and .occasionally the severe vomiting carries off the patient. Of course there is no cure for disfigurements, nor can parts which have once dropped off he made to crow on again; but the disease is eradicated from all parts where it lurks in an active state. The above cure, or alleged cure, for leprosy was brought by the Burmese doctor before a European practitioner in Mandalay or Rangoon, and this practitioner advised the man to lay his secret before the Indian Government. But nothing was done. As I held an official position under the Indian .Government at that time, I informally undertook to make the suggestion. But there is some knacic or secret in the mixing or heating of the drugs above enumerated, and this secret the Burmese doctor would not disclose without a preliminary reward. Thus the thing fell through again. 1 promised not to disclose the secret even so far as it is explained above ; but the man died a, couple of years ago, and I therefore consider rayself absolved.